Self-assembly and biomineralization are used for fabrication of many composite materials. Bone tissue is a particularly complex example of such a composite because it contains multiple levels of hierarchical organization (S. Weiner, H. D. Wagner, Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci. 28, 271-298 (1998)). At the lowest level of this hierarchy is the organization of collagen fibrils with respect to hydroxyapatite (HA) crystals. Collagen fibrils are formed by self-assembly of collagen triple helices while the HA crystals grow within these fibrils in such a way that their c-axes are oriented along the long axes of the fibrils (W. Traub, S. Weiner, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 86, 9822-9826 (1989)). The preparation of any material with structure on the nanoscale is a challenging problem. Fabrication of materials that resemble bone, even at the lowest level of hierarchical organization, is even more difficult because it involves two dissimilar organic and inorganic nanophases that have a specific spatial relationship with respect to one another. One approach, using an artificial system, has been to prepare an organic nanophase designed to exert control over crystal nucleation and growth of the inorganic component.
The controlled nucleation and growth of crystals from organic templates has been demonstrated in in vitro experiments and in a number of natural biomineralizing systems (S. Mann, J. P. Hannington, R. J. P. Williams, Nature 324, 565-567 (1986); D. D. Archibald, S. Mann, Nature 364, 430-433 (1993); S. L. Burkett, S. Mann, Chem. Commun. 321-322 (1996); S. I. Stupp, P. V. Braun, Science 277, 1242-1248 (1997); J. Aizenberg, A. J. Black, G. M. Whitesides, Nature 398, 495-498 (1999); S. R. Whaley, D. S. English, E. L. Hu, P. F. Barbara, A. M. Belcher, Nature 405, 665-668. (2000); L. Addadi, S. Weiner, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl. 31, 153-169 (1992); S. Mann, J. Chem. Soc., Dalton Tran. 3953-3961 (1997); S. Weiner, L. Addadi, J. Mater. Chem. 7, 689-702 (1997)). These studies on templated crystal growth suggest that nucleation occurs on surfaces exposing repetitive patterns of anionic groups. Anionic groups tend to concentrate the inorganic cations creating local supersaturation followed by oriented nucleation of the crystal. Many groups have investigated the preparation of bone-like materials using three dimensional organic substrates such as poly(lactic acid), reconstituted collagen and many others, and some studies shows a similar correlation between the crystallographic orientation of hydroxyapatite when the organic scaffold is made from reconstituted collagen (G. K. Hunter, H. A. Goldberg, Biochem. J. 302, 175-179 (1994); G. M. Bond, R. H. Richman, W. P. McNaughton, J. Mater. Eng. Perform. 4, 334-345 (1995); J.-H. Bradt, M. Mertig, A. Teresiak, W. Pompe, Chem. Mater. 11, 2694-2701 (1999); N. Ignjatovic, S. Tomic, M. Dakic, M. Miljkovic, M. Plavsic, D. Uskokovic, Biomaterials 20, 809-816 (1999); F. Miyaji, H.-M. Kim, S. Handa, T. Kokubo, T. Nakamura, Biomaterials 20, 913-919 (1999); H. K. Varma, Y. Yokogawa, F. F. Espinosa, Y. Kawamoto, K. Nishizawa, F. Nagata, T. Kameyama, J. Mater. Sci.: Mater. Med. 10, 395-400 (1999); A. Bigi, E. Boanini, S. Panzavolta, N. Roveri, Biomacromolecules 1, 752-756 (2001); M. Kikuchi, S. Itoh, S. Ichinose, K. Shinomiya, J. Tanaka, Biomaterials 22, 1705-1711 (2001)). However, such results have never been demonstrated in a pre-designed and engineered self-assembling molecular system.